Volusia elections supervisor: Ballot outsourcing 'failed miserably'

Wednesday

Oct 17, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Volusia County outsourced the printing and mailing of its absentee ballots for the first time this year. The results haven't been good.

Andrew GantStaff writer

Volusia County tried outsourcing the printing and mailing of its absentee ballots for the first time this year. The results haven't been good. They've been bad enough that Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall, saying the idea "failed miserably," is taking back the job and planning to bill the contractor for the mess. "We opened up a phone bank to take all these calls from some very, very angry people," McFall said Wednesday, saying phone calls have surpassed 100 per day recently. Across the county, thousands of people who ordered absentee ballots earlier this month have been waiting and waiting for them to arrive. They've grown frustrated trying to get answers. The elections office had received more than 63,000 absentee ballot requests as of Tuesday night. The vast majority of those have been delayed. So McFall has expressed frustration, too, with contractor Advanced Ballot Solutions. McFall said an initial run of 45,000 to 50,000 ballots "sat for days at ABS," then got sent to a mail processing center in Tampa (instead of Orlando), then transferred to Jacksonville. That shipment "is finally just now being delivered to the people requesting a ballot. This is unacceptable," McFall said. Absentee voting is highly popular across Florida and in Volusia, where the 63,367 mail requests so far represents more than a quarter of the 245,842 total ballots cast in the 2008 election. Volusia and other large counties, anticipating a record year of absentee requests, outsourced the printing and mailing duties to ABS this year in the hopes it would save time and staffing costs. Smaller counties like Flagler didn't outsource. Flagler's supervisor, Kimberle Weeks, said her department has handled around 9,000 requests without any problems or delays. About 3,000 have been returned. "We're doing it all by hand, and it's going smooth as silk," Weeks said.McFall asked voters to wait until Thursday to see if a ballot arrives, and if not, to contact her office. "There are no excuses for poor service," she said. "I take full and complete responsibility and promise that everyone who has ordered an absentee ballot will receive one in plenty of time to vote in the general election, even if that means issuing a replacement ballot and canceling the first order." This isn't the only problem Volusia has had this year with its ballots. Last week, a small number of ABS-prepared ballots went out to Volusia voters, mainly in Edgewater, without page 1. That issue appeared to be limited to less than 10 voters. McFall said ABS charges about $1.75 to mail each ballot. That doesn't include the cost of printing them. However, she doesn't anticipate paying the company anything. Her office is keeping track of expenses related to the delays — including about 1,500 replacement ballots sent so far — and plans to bill ABS for it. Today, the office has about 40 temporary workers stuffing envelopes. McFall said she started work at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and works until 11 p.m. The delayed distribution of so many ballots also means a large number of them will come back to the elections office all at once.